Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [252]
“Oh she’ll be your cousin, all right.” His father had looked amused. “Though I’ve never seen her. Your uncle Henry was a great one for the women. You’ve more cousins in Leinster than you suppose. There was a beautiful girl once, up in the hills. That would be his daughter by her, I’ve no doubt. It’s a pity your uncle died when he did, but he certainly left a record of his passing.” He sighed affectionately. “Is she pretty?”
“She is,” John said, then blushed.
“Well, she’s your cousin,” his father had confirmed. “And I’ll tell you something more. Most of the land around here, and right up to Dublin, used to belong to the mother’s people. The Ui Fergusa they were called. We’ve been here since the days of Strongbow, when we were granted the estate. But they have long memories. As far as the descendants of the Ui Fergusa are concerned, we’re on their land.”
The memory of the girl had fascinated him for a long time. Once he had even gone over to Glendalough to ask after her. But they told him she had moved away, and he had never seen her again.
Indeed, a year later he had wondered if she might have died. For that had been the time of the terrible plague.
The Black Death had finally come to Ireland, as it had to all Europe. From 1347 onwards, for nearly four years, the plague, carried by fleas from the rats with whom, whether they know it or not, humans always share their dwellings, had swept across the whole continent. In its bubonic form, it afflicted its victims with terrible sores; in its even more deadly pneumonic form, it attacked their lungs and was passed, with terrible rapidity, from person to person on their breath. Perhaps a third of the population of Europe died. It had arrived on Ireland’s east coast in August 1348.
The Walshes had been lucky. John’s father had been going into Dublin on the very day that news came that the plague had arrived there. News of the Great Mortality, as it was called, had already reached them a little earlier from merchant ships coming into the port; so that the moment Walsh heard of a sudden sickness in the city, he had turned back. For more than a month the family had remained on their farm; and God, it seemed, had ordained that they were to survive. For though other farms were struck and the nearby fishing village of Dalkey suffered—they even heard there had been deaths up at Glendalough—the plague had passed them by.
But the effect on the Dublin region had been considerable. In the city and its suburbs, there were whole streets left almost empty. The Church estates had lost numerous tenants. There was a sense of desolation and disorder, as if the land had just been at war. And so it was hardly a surprise to the Walsh family if the O’Tooles and O’Byrnes up in the Wicklow Mountains, sensing the weakness in the plains below, began to come down to see what pickings there were to be had. There were certainly cattle with not enough men to guard them. Nobody familiar with the traditional life of the clans could be surprised if there were a few cattle raids. “They’ve been taking each other’s cattle since before Saint Patrick came,” John’s father calmly remarked, “so we needn’t be surprised if they extend the compliment to us.” To young John, and he suspected to his father, too, there was a certain excitement in the prospect of a raid. There was the thrill of the chase, the chance of a little skirmish with people whom, in all likelihood, one would recognise. It was part of frontier life. But the royal Justiciar in Dublin had taken a bleaker view. To him, and to the citizens of Dublin, these signs of disorder were to be deplored and must be dealt with firmly. Fortifications were needed. And so it was that the castle of Carrickmines—which had been neglected for years—had been repaired and strengthened, and John Walsh’s father had been asked to move out of his farmstead and take over as castellan of the place. “We need a good, reliable man,” the Justiciar had told him. And young John had been dimly conscious that the change also represented a social promotion for